Although the surface is cold, the base of an ice sheet is generally warmer due to geothermal heat. In places, melting occurs and the melt-water lubricates the ice sheet so that it flows more rapidly. This process produces fast-flowing channels in the ice sheet — these are ice streams.

The present-day polar ice sheets are relatively young in geological terms. The Antarctic Ice Sheet first formed as a small ice cap (maybe several) in the early Oligocene, but retreating and advancing many times until the Pliocene, when it came to occupy almost all of Antarctica. The Greenland ice sheet did not develop at all until the late Pliocene, but apparently developed very rapidly with the first continental glaciation. This had the unusual effect of allowing fossils of plants that once grew on present-day Greenland to be much better preserved than with the slowly forming Antarctic ice sheet.

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The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million km2 and contains 30 million km3 of ice. Around 90% of the fresh water on the Earth's surface is held in the ice sheet, and, if melted, would cause sea levels to rise by 58 metres.[3] The continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive and significant at >0.05°C/decade since 1957.[4]

The Greenland ice sheet occupies about 82% of the surface of Greenland, and if melted would cause sea levels to rise by 7.2 metres.[3] Estimated changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year.[6] These measurements came from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, launched in 2002, as reported by BBC News in August 2006.[7]

Ice movement is dominated by the motion of glaciers, whose activity is determined by a number of processes.[8] Their motion is the result of cyclic surges interspersed with longer periods of inactivity, on both hourly and centennial time scales.

The Greenland, and probably the Antarctic, ice sheets have been losing mass recently, because losses by melting and outlet glaciers exceed accumulation of snowfall. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), loss of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheet mass contributed, respectively, about 0.21 ± 0.35 and 0.21 ± 0.07 mm/year to sea level rise between 1993 and 2003.[9]

The IPCC projects that ice mass loss from melting of the Greenland ice sheet will continue to outpace accumulation of snowfall. Accumulation of snowfall on the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to outpace losses from melting. However, loss of mass on the Antarctic sheet may continue, if there is sufficient loss to outlet glaciers. In the words of the IPCC, "Dynamical processes related to ice flow not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing future sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude." More research work is therefore required to improve the reliability of predictions of ice-sheet response on global warming.

The effects on ice formations of an increasing in temperature will accelerate. When ice is melted away less light from the sun will be reflected back into space and more will be absorbed by the ocean water causing further rises in temperature. This positive ice-albedo feedback system could become independent of climate change past a certain point which will cause huge losses of ice to the icecaps.